Damage (10 page)

She approached the front doors and just then they swung open and a young man emerged. “Oh, hi,” he said, and she recognized him as the guy she’d seen when she first came to the Hall looking for Blunt. “He’s inside, just go in.”

It was as if she were stuck in a loop, her own personal
Groundhog Day
, and that reinforced her earlier sense that she was trapped in this village.

The guy was holding the door for her, so she smiled her thanks and went inside.

In the main lobby everything was brightly lit, but no-one was there. Off to one side, double doors stood open and Holly could see that they led onto a large reception room, a ballroom, even.

She paused on the threshold. Against one wall there was a row of tables covered in white linen, and a woman was working her way along putting yellow sticky notes at intervals. Holly moved across so that she could read the first note:
onion walnut blue cheese tart
. The next read
parma asparagus
, and then
crostini
. Markers for when caterers came to lay out a buffet, Holly realized.

At the far end of the ballroom a band was setting up. A shaven-headed guy was slapping the strings of a double bass as he adjusted the tuning knobs while a saxophonist started to run through scales, and before them, Nicholas Blunt stood, his back to Holly, hands clasped behind him as he watched the musicians. White shirt, black trousers, as if he was halfway through getting dressed, his tux and bow-tie draped over the back of a chair nearby. She felt distinctly under-dressed in her jeans, t-shirt and open shirt.

The grand setting, the almost-assembled party... it was like something out of
The Shining
, or the mansion of Dickens’ Miss Havisham.

As she approached Blunt, Holly realized how deceptive the ballroom had been. The space was far larger than it had appeared from the doorway.

She paused, opened her mouth to speak, not wanting to startle him – partly from politeness, but also aware of how prickly he could be – and then he turned, saw her, and in that moment, when his entire face lit up, all doubts and paranoia were vanquished.

They approached each other, the band still tuning up.

Stopping just out of reach, Holly said, “Am I interrupting?” She raised her eyebrows and indicated the band and the tables with their sticky notes.

“No, no. It’s tomorrow. They’re setting up for a party tomorrow.”

She nodded, looked down, then darted her eyes back up to fix on him. “I thought you might call,” she said.

It was his turn to look away then, his expression faltering. “I told you,” he said. “I don’t know how all this goes. I never call the next day–”

For a moment she thought that this was it, the moment when he would tell her she was just one of his tarts and she’d been stupid to think anything different, but then he went on:

“–I never get involved with women who work their way into my consciousness so that I can barely have a single thought free of them when they’re not there. I don’t... I don’t let anyone get their way into my head the way you’ve worked your way into my head. I just don’t do that. I’m sorry I didn’t call, but it’s not because you haven’t been ever-present in my thoughts ever since... well, ever since Wednesday night.”

She took a step towards him, reached up, put a finger on those hard lips that could be so soft. Silenced him.

His hand enfolded hers, his grip so strong, and he kissed that finger, holding the kiss for a second or two, and then drew her hand away, so it came to lie on his chest.

Turning his head to the side, he called over his shoulder, “Hey, Rudi. Play something, would you?”

The saxophonist paused mid-scale, said something to the bassist and drummer and then they struck up the opening notes of
She
. Holly recognized it instantly, one of her favorites, and for a moment she wondered how it was that Blunt could get inside her head like that, and then... then his hand covered hers on his chest, his other rested on her hip and he started to move.

He danced with a languid ease, his limp almost completely gone as the rhythm took over. He held her, swaying a little, easing from step to step, effortlessly leading her around the floor. And those pale gray eyes, always fixed on hers.

Eventually she had to look away. It felt like a fairy-tale and if she remained fixed by that gaze for any longer she might... just... fall. Forever fall.

She dipped her head forward, and rested her cheek against his collar-bone, breathing in his musky, spicy scent.

§

When the music stopped they might have been dancing all night, but it had only been one song. Three minutes, maybe four.

They paused, and the band moved seamlessly into
It Had To Be You
and for a moment it all seemed rehearsed, as if Blunt had known she would be here and had prepared a play-list in anticipation.

Instead of starting to dance again, Blunt held her close, the two of them alone in the middle of the empty dance floor like guests at a ghost party. His cheek against hers, his breath in her hair, brushing softly across her neck. “I don’t do this,” he said once again. “I don’t let myself... I don’t allow myself to
fall
.”

And neither do I
... But she said nothing, just kept her head tucked into the crook of his shoulder and neck, let her free hand slip around to the small of his back so she could draw him close, feel the hardness of his lean body against hers, feel the heaving of her own chest against his.

She pulled him even closer, then, aware of his body responding to her touch. Rolling her hips, she pressed and moved, gliding and grinding against him, their contact one moment hard and intense, the next fleeting, teasing.

Another seamless transition to
Moon River
, and now Blunt was in control again, leading Holly in a smooth waltz that took them right around the ballroom floor, neatly sidestepping the sticky note lady who had turned to watch.

At the end they tumbled against a wall, laughing in each other’s arms. “I’ve never done that before,” said Holly, gasping for breath. How could something so smooth and graceful be such hard work?

He held her close as their breathing returned to normal, and she was intensely aware of the thumping of her heart against his rib-cage.

“I...” She didn’t know what she had been going to say, just that it was one of those moments that needed filling.

“Me too,” Blunt said into her pause, smiling. He stepped away, offered her his arm, and said, “Shall we?”

§

He led her back out into the lobby, a wide, brightly-lit space with many doors opening off it, and blocky, modern paintings hanging from wherever there was space on the walls. More tables had been put up here, stacked with plates, glinting cutlery and row up on row of fine glasses – champagne flutes, wine glasses, small, finely-cut crystal glasses and more. The last party Holly had been to was a barbecue at Karen’s place. They’d drunk boxed wine out of plastic cups and eaten burnt meat in crusty baps, with rolls of kitchen towel to clean greasy fingers afterwards. This... it was all another world entirely.

She glanced across at Blunt, who made no secret of where he was looking, his eyes roving up and down her body like a predator eyeing up its next prey.

She felt so out of place.

Blunt was a successful businessman, very much a man of the world, and probably fifteen years her senior. What could he possibly see in her?

He moved towards her, but she sidestepped. The nearest painting, a solid block of vibrant red with a narrow freehand blue border down one side looked like a copy of a Barnett Newman. Holly had studied Newman at university. Not really her kind of thing, but she had to admit this piece was quite striking in the grand setting of the Hall.

“You like?”

He was next to her, close but not touching.

She nodded. “It’s all about context,” she said. “Your interior designer has made some good choices.” She remembered when she first came here to work for Blunt, when she’d decided that the place had the feel of somewhere decorated by someone who had been given minimal instructions.

“It’s a thing of mine,” he said, and she knew he was trying to impress her.

“You’re a collector?”

He nodded, and she looked again at the painting. Maybe not a copy after all. Now she glanced around, taking in all the other works hanging from the walls. That grid of black lines containing blocks of primary color was either Mondrian or a decent copy; those rough geometrical daubs a de Kooning, perhaps; that mad explosion of shapes and color a Kandinsky. If they were genuine it was like having the National Gallery here in the village, a Rijksmuseum on the doorstep.

“Pretty,” she said.

All this art, and she was acutely aware that he was looking only at her, studying the rise and fall of her breasts, the line of her jaw, the curve of her ass in black jeans so tight they might have been sprayed on.

She moved across to the next canvas – more angular blocks of color on a white background, no signature – and Blunt remained where he was, studying her.

His look made her conscious of every small move, every turn, every shift of angle. She ran a hand down her side, across her hip, to her thigh, and then left the hand dangling.

She wanted him. Now. With every ounce of her, she wanted him. She had moved past the point of wondering what he saw in her, or what she saw in him; there was only that look, and the way it focused her awareness of her own body.

She turned, moved on, aware as never before of the sway of her hips as she walked.

That hand: on her hip again, then sliding up and across the flat of her belly beyond his view. She couldn’t resist, and kept that hand gliding up, fingertips tracing the cleft between her breasts, palm brushing against the swell, against the hard nub of a nipple and sending electric thrills through her body.

A quick glance back at him, and his eyes were still fixed on her.

He was a puppet and she was controlling all the strings. A slight pull here, careful tension there, a tug and a tease... She paused before the next painting, twisting at the waist, emphasizing the narrowness, the curves of her ass and legs, the swell of her breasts.

He was glued to the spot. The sexual tension between them was like elastic pulled tight.

The painting... swirls of blue on white. She half-recognized it but didn’t care any more. The guy had art. Get over it.

Finally he moved, eyes still fixed on her. There was something sinuous in his movements and the intensity of his gaze, and Holly was reminded of their dancing earlier. Where that dancing had been intimate, smooth, graceful, this – these movements, this intensity – it was a tango, it was the
paso doble
, the dance of the matador.

She turned away from him, all too aware of the view she was presenting, the loose flow of the open shirt leading the eye down to the tightness of her butt, the slender lines of her legs.

She moved on. A sculpture. Bronze, emaciated figures, almost like stick people. Giacometti? A couple in a tangled embrace, awkward and sensuous at the same time. She reached out, trailing a finger along the lines of one of the figures.

He was close now.

He could reach out and–

A hand on the back of her head, gripping her skull in its wide span, turning her so that her face tipped up, her back still to him, and he could dip his head down and kiss her, their heads inverted so that his upper lip went to her lower.

A second passed. Two. And then she twisted, pulled away, wriggled free from his grip and moved on to the next painting.

Yeah. Art. Cezanne. Whatever.

Her head was spinning. None of this seemed real, and the Who’s Who of the art world hanging from his walls only reinforced the sense that this was some kind of dream.

She moved on.

She didn’t need to glance back over her shoulder to sense his gaze burning into her, didn’t need to see the utter need in his eyes to know it was there.

She paused on the third step, turned, and he was there, one foot on the ground, the other up on the step beside her, his face level with her belly, his forehead at the level of her ribs.

Strong arms looped around her and his face ground into her abdomen. With the fabric of her t-shirt in his teeth he jerked his head up to pull it free. She reached down, took the material, raised it so that his mouth was on her bare skin. Teeth raked across her belly, stubble scraping roughly, a scintillation of prickles, each a spark of pleasure across her nerve endings.

Pushing back up again, his forehead pressed against the swell of her breasts, shifting their weight, making her acutely aware of their fullness, and of the sudden sensitivity of her hard nipples, straining against her bra.

A movement, over by the double doors. The sticky note lady – Blunt’s party manager? – had emerged from the ballroom, seen the two of them partway up the stairs, looked away, retreated.

Holly twisted free, stepped back, up another step, and let her t-shirt fall, covering her once more.

She turned, took another step, then another, knowing that her ass was at Blunt’s eye level and his gaze would be following every little sway and wiggle.

She reached the top of the stairs, the mezzanine area with the view down across the Hall’s entrance lobby.

The light here was like in a church, beams of sunlight angling in through high windows. Like a museum – which was apt, given Blunt’s art collection.

Holly turned, waited as he approached, then she took a handful of his shirt and pulled him into another kiss. Intense, yet brief, fleeting. Tongues and teeth clashing, lips mashing together and then tug turned to push, her knuckles in his chest forcing him back, and she turned, and took a few more steps towards the passageway to his private quarters, so there was distance between them again.

She felt so brazen, taking control like that, and it was one of the most intense, horniest feelings she had ever known. Understanding what the sight of her did to him, knowing how she made his heart race... how he hadn’t been able to shake even the thought of her since that encounter on the village green.